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The only really unusual maps I contemplated were ringworlds, those are really straight forward - you just have way too much territory to cover, even at the small sizes I was working with (Banks Orbitals with ~1100 times the Earth's surface area).

The only really unusual maps I contemplated were ringworlds, those are really straight forward - you just have way too much territory to cover, even at the small sizes I was working with (Banks Orbitals with ~1100 times the Earth's surface area).

Hehe. How about a 1 AU Dyson shell. ~550 million times the Earth's surface area.

That looks sort of like an anti-donut or the opposite of what some cosmographers see the universe as (all edges wrap around forming a donut). Kind of cool idea.

If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)

------Assuming I stick with fantasy cartography, I'd like to become a World Builder, laying out not only a realistic topography, but also the geopolitical boundaries and at least rough descriptions of the countries and societies.

Out of curiosity, I did a bit of digging on this one because I just couldn't believe that it wasn't a joke. Not only is it not a joke, but there are still people who believe in a flat Earth! http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
How scary is that?

Out of curiosity, I did a bit of digging on this one because I just couldn't believe that it wasn't a joke. Not only is it not a joke, but there are still people who believe in a flat Earth! http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
How scary is that?

No more scary than Germ Theory denialists, Creationists, Lamarkians, Geocentrists, Homeopaths, or the Anti-Vaccine movement.